The Secret Lives of Doctors' Wives. Ann Major

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      Raul started shaking and refused to look up from the ground.

      Michael continued to stare at Pablo. The youth was too tall and too skinny for his large frame. He wore a dirty red bandana. A greasy dark braid hung down the middle of his back. He shoved his hands deep in his pockets and eased his weight from one foot to the other, his soulless eyes gazing anywhere but at Raul or Michael.

      Michael wanted to know what the kids knew, what they’d seen, but he was going to have to take them downtown and separate them.

      Sweat dripped from his brow onto his notepad as he sucked in a long, exasperated breath. “Kid, we’re getting nowhere fast.”

      “I told you all I know.”

      The fog in Michael’s brain thickened. He held up the wallet again. “You’re going to change your bullshit story before I’m through.”

      Pablo stared at his dirty athletic shoes.

       “Damn it! You were all over the house! Did you see anybody else? Hear anything?”

      “Man, I don’t have to take this. I’m only sixteen.”

      “Kids like you get tried as adults all the time. You think about that—Paulo.”

      “Pablo! You think I’m just a kid, but I know my rights. We don’t have to talk to no cop without our lawyer.”

      “All right. Have it your way.” Michael left them and headed toward the house.

      “Hey! You! Come back here! Let us go!”

      As their screams grew louder, Michael took the stairs beneath the brilliant chandelier two at a time.

      To hell with them!

      Finally, Beth had made it back to the hospital.

      Maybe it was the late hour, maybe Rosie was just exhausted, maybe she’d seen too many scenes on TV where women got assaulted in parking garages, or maybe it was aftershocks from her ugly run-in with Pierce—whatever, Rosie had a bad case of the jitters as she climbed the concrete stairs to the fourth floor in the hospital parking garage. She was nearly to her Beamer when her cell phone rang.

      Climbing faster, she dug for it in her purse, and for her keys, too, only to panic when she read Yolie’s home phone number in the little blue window.

      It was well after two-thirty. Jennifer and Alexis were home alone now, since Yolie had driven to the ranch.

      Rosie pushed open the door to the fourth floor. “Jennifer?” Her voice echoed in the dimly lit garage.

      “Alexis is gone!” the teenager shrieked without preamble. “I’ve looked everywhere!”

      Seeing her Beamer, Rosie raced to it. “She can’t be…gone. She’s hiding or something.”

      “No…I’ve looked everywhere.”

      With shaking hands, Rosie unlocked the car and got in. “Did you check the pool?”

      “I turned on the pool lights and the floodlights and everything…She went to bed with Blue Binkie not long after Yolie left. My boyfriend called, and I was on the phone for a while. Then I went up to check on her. I swear, she was fine, but now her bed’s empty. I checked every door and window. They’re all locked. Your bedroom’s empty, except for Lula.”

      Lula was Yolie’s huge, white poodle.

      Rosie couldn’t believe anything else could go wrong—even if it was her birthday. Alexis gone?

      Rosie squeezed her eyes shut and fought panic, not for the first time tonight. As she started the ignition, she thought about their mysterious break-in two days ago. That had been so strange…just as Pierce calling her tonight had been strange. Looking back, the break-in felt almost like an omen.

      Yolie’s security company had phoned her and said the alarm was going off. When they’d checked it out, the kitchen door had been unlocked, but shut. Oddly, Lula had been locked in an upstairs bathroom without food or water, barking her head off. When Rosie had gone up to let her out, Yolie’s favorite pink bath mat had been nothing but bits of rubber and pink fuzz.

      Other than that, there had been no signs of an intruder. Nor had any valuables been missing.

      So, who had unlocked the door and set off the alarm? Who had locked Lula upstairs? Lula had a bad habit of biting postmen and pool men, but she’d let herself be locked in the bathroom without shedding so much as a drop of blood on the white wall-to-wall carpet.

      “Shit happens,” the security guy had said, as if that explained it. “Or you have a mystery intruder. Somebody who’s got a key. Somebody your doggie knows. Or you’ve got a glitch in your system somewhere.”

      “Check the system,” Yolie had said.

      “I’m so scared, Ms. Castle,” Jennifer whispered now, cutting into Rosie’s thoughts.

      Me, too, Rosie thought.

      She wound her way down the parking garage ramp and soon was speeding west on Martin Luther King, Jr.

      “The house is so big and dark…And there’s all these spooky sounds. I’ve been hearing them ever since Yolie put the garage door down and drove away.”

      “Then call 911! I’ll be there as fast as I can, but I’m at least ten minutes away!”

      Oh, why hadn’t Yolie installed cameras?

      The break-in had seemed so insignificant. It was odd how the small moments and the casual decisions could turn out to be the most important ones of all.

      What if…Rosie simply hadn’t gone to Pierce’s tonight?

      She forced herself to concentrate on her driving and getting home safely so she could find Alexis. Darling precious Alexis.

       Alexis had to be all right.

      A distant light switched from green to yellow to red.

      Rosie slowed, looked both ways; then she stomped down hard on the gas pedal. She prayed that Michael wasn’t nearby in his radio car, ready to pounce again, like he had that night a year ago when she’d seen Pierce jogging and had decided it was time to confront him about the rent.

      No sign of a radio car.

      Rosie shot through the light.

      Michael was worrying over his report in his unmarked four-door Crown Vic in front of Carver’s mansion.

      The scene, the punks, the victim, all felt wrong. Why? What was he missing?

      Keith was leaning back in the passenger seat smoking while Michael went over the facts one last time. Suddenly they caught a call about a missing little girl on their radio.

      The name Alexis Castle meant nothing to Michael. The name Rose Marie Castle charged through him in a soul-searing bolt.

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